It will be interesting to see what that does to the MAAC

As I said before, MAAC will be going with 10 MLAX members next year despite losing one full member (Monmouth) and one affiliate member (St. Bonaventure) and having another full conference member who plays MLAX in a different conference (Fairfield plays in the CAA). They're adding Mt. St. Mary's as a full member, and adding affiliate members in LIU, Sacred Heart, Wagner and VMI (the latter an affiliate MAAC member from 2003-13). Interestingly, LIU, Sacred Heart and Wagner signed only two-year agreements with the MAAC, raising, to my mind at least, a question as to whether the NEC will resume sponsorship of the sport down the road. 10 members is a lot, particularly in a sport where OOC scheduling plays such an important role in NCAA tournament selection, and for a conference whose champion is very likely to wind up in the play-in game for awhile in the foreseeable future.

Imho, the more conferences with AQ bids, the merrier. I've said before that I believe expansion of the NCAA tournament field will be driven more by the number of conferences with AQ bids than by the number of overall teams at the Division 1 level. I also believe that 11 is the magic number of conferences with AQ bids to expand the field to 24 teams. At that point, three play-in games would mean that a majority of AQ bids -- 6 out of 11 -- were participating in a play-in game in the current system, and I don't think the conferences would like that.

In any event, it's good to see an existing Division 1 school add the sport. As your link mentioned, that last happened with St. Bonaventure and Utah in 2019. Expansion since then has consisted of Division 2 programs upgrading their athletic departments -- LIU and Merrimack in 2020, and Lindenwood and Queens University next year.